The Reef Environmental Education Foundation (REEF) has an interesting program in which "citizen scientists" volunteer to conduct surveys on fish abundance while scuba diving. Because the number of recreational scuba divers is much larger than the number of researchers studying fish around the world, the REEF Fish Survey has produced a data set that should be useful to researchers and educators.
http://www.reef.org/programs/volunteersurvey
Data Collection
Data is collected by a survey method known as the "roving diver technique". During the roving diver technique scuba divers dive as they would on a normal dive. Obviously, there are special problems associated with collecting data underwater. Divers can carry a slate and write their data on that slate using a pencil to write underwater. Divers attempt to identify as many species of fishes as possible.
It would be very helpful to have data about the abundance of fishes. However, counting the exact number of fish of each species that you observe is quite difficult. Thus, in the roving diver technique divers do not attempt to count the exact number of individuals per species, but instead, they assign each species to one of four abundance categories based on about how many were seen throughout the dive [single (1); few (2-10), many (11-100), and abundant (>100)].
After returning to the surface the divers submit their data by the internet to the REEF database. It is possible for anyone to extract information from the REEF database to use in research or teaching projects. http://www.reef.org/db/reports
Fish Ecology Research Project
The rich data set available from REEF allows us to ask a variety of types of questions.
This Powerpoint Slideshow should provide some background information for those of you are are working with me on the research project (the rest of you are certainly encouraged to check this out as well).
http://www.slideshare.net/MarkMcGinley/fish-ecology-research-project
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